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Friday, 24 June 2016

In September last year I wrote a blog about working
conditions in merchant shipping in the 1870s (Click here to read it). In it I referred to the work done by the
great maritime reformer Samuel Plimsoll (1824-1898) who worked tirelessly to
combat the practices of over-insuring decrepit ships that were likely to
founder – taking their crews with them – and of overloading ships far beyond their
safe draughts. His name lives on in “The Plimsoll Line” – the marking on ships’
hulls that marks the deepest loading allowed for the vessel in various
conditions. In 1867, Plimsoll advanced his cause by getting elected as the
Liberal Member of Parliament but his efforts to get a law passed on safe
loading were frustrated by the larger number of ship-owners who were also
members.

Plimsoll’s crusade, inside and outside the British
Parliament, was heavily dependent on amassing a vast amount of evidence, much
of it gained through interviews with officers and sailors. He also interviewed seamen’s
families in harbour-towns – who were only too often reduced to the status of
widows and orphans. This provided a basis for a book entitled “Our Seamen”, which he published in 1872.
It evoked much outrage in the wider public and gained support eventually for the
legislation Plimsoll had demanded. His meetings with bereaved relatives provide
particularly poignant insights to the lives of the poor in the 1870s. Below are
summaries of some such interactions.

In a particularly moving example Plimsoll tells of a 23-year
old widow, with children, who is keeping alive by mangling clothes (i.e.
squeezing the water from items that have just been washed). The mangle, a
rolling device worked by a crank, was bought for her by her neighbours.
Plimsoll remarked that “the poor are very
kind to each other.” Her husband was serving on a ship identified as the S—n (Severn,
perhaps? Threat of legal action made direct references risky), an unseaworthy
vessel which her owner insured for £3,000 more than he had paid for her. For one
last voyage she was loaded under the owner’s personal superintendence, so
deeply that Plimsoll claimed that the dockmaster told him that he had pointed
her out to a friend as she left the dock, saying emphatically, “That ship will never reach her destination.”
She did not – she was lost with all hands – twenty in total. The young
widow’s husband had complained to the owner before sailing that the ship was too-deeply
loaded, but without avail.

The popular image of the clipper - the aristocrat of merchant shipping in the 19th CenturyThe underlying reality could be much less romantic

A dreadful aspect of cases like this was touched on in the earlier
blog referred to. The law was such that once a seaman had signed on for a
voyage – which on occasion poverty might force him to do without having first
seen the ship itself – refusal to board could result in criminal prosecution
and imprisonment with hard labour, typically for twelve weeks for each offence. Large numbers of seamen were jailed for
refusing to sail on vessels they believed to be unseaworthy or which were
inadequately manned.

Plimsoll refers to another pathetic case. In “a most evil-smelling room” in a slum he
found in the corner of a room “two poor
women in one bed, stricken with fever (one died two days after I saw them),
mother and daughter.” The daughter’s husband, the only support of both
women, had been lost at sea shortly before in an overloaded ship. Plimsoll spoke
to a customs officer, “a Mr. B——l”, a customs
officer who had needed to visit the ship before she departed and when asked how
to identify her was told “She’s yonder;
you can easily find her, she is nearly over t’head in the water” Mr. B——l
told Plimsoll that “I asked no questions,
but stepped on board; this description was quite sufficient.”

The Workhouse, last refuge of the destitute widow -this is mealtime in the St. Pancras workhouse in London

Another lady told Plimsoll that she and her younger brother were
orphans and brought up by an older sister. The latter’s husband supported the brother
in going to sea, and he did well enough to qualify as a Second Mate on sailing
ships. He wished however to qualify in steamships and was engaged to serve in a
ship that was leaking badly. He was however assured when he signed on that full
repairs would be made before loading. This did not happen and according to Plimsoll
he told his sister that the vessel was loaded “like a sand-barge.” Both his sister and her husband urged him not
to sail and he promised that he would not. He went to the ship to get the wages
due to him. Here he “was refused payment
unless he went, was over-persuaded and threatened, and called a coward, which
greatly excited him. He went, and two days afterwards the ship went down.”

The brutal reality of destitution - one of the greatest Victorian paintingsApplicants to a Casual Ward (1874) by Sir Luke Fildes (1843-1927)

Even across fourteen decades it is impossible not to be
moved – and outraged – by some of Plimsoll’s findings. His account of the simple
dignity of one of these widows deserves respect. She was surviving by sewing
for a ready-made clothes shopkeeper. “She
was in a small garret with a sloping roof and the most modest fireplace I ever
saw; just three bits of iron laid from side to side of an opening in the
brickwork, and two more up the front; no chimney-piece, or jambs, or stone
across the top, but just the bricks laid nearer and nearer until the courses
united. So I don’t fancy she could be earning much. But with the very least
money value in the place, it was as beautifully clean as I ever saw a room in
my life.”

This lady’s husband had also committed to a ship that proved
to have been overloaded. He came home and, according to her “got his tea without saying a word, and then
sat looking into the fire in a deep study, like. I asked him what ailed him,
and he said, more to himself than to me, “She’s such a beast!” I thought he meant the men’s place was
dirty, as he had complained before that there was no place to wash. He liked to
be clean, my husband, and always had a good wash when he came home from the
workshop, when he worked ashore. So I said, “Will you let me come on board
to clean it out for you?” And he said,
still looking at the fire, “It ain’t that.” Well, he hadn’t signed, only agreed, so I said, “Don’t sign, Jim,” and he said he wouldn’t, and went and told
the engineer he shouldn’t go.” The
engineer overcame his objections by offering ten shillings (half-a-pound
sterling) per month more. He had had no work for a long time, and the money was
tempting, so he signed. “When he told me
I said, “You won’t go, Jim, will you?” He
said, “Why, Minnie, they will put me in gaol if I don’t go.” I said, “Never mind, you can come home
after that.” It turned out however that he had also been accused of cowardice
and that too had played a role in his decision. It cost him his life.

Plimsoll himself was clearly moved and he told the wretched
woman, who was by then crying bitterly, “I
hope you won’t think I am asking all these questions from idle curiosity.” He
was to remember her answer: “Oh no, sir;
I am glad to answer you, for so many homes might be kept from being desolate if
it was only looked into”.

A homeless mother on the street with her childrenA German illustration of the period - such sights were common across Europe

Another story involved a couple who had lost a son at the age
of twenty-two. He had been taken on as a stoker, and worked on the ship some
days before she was ready for sea. He did not want to go when he saw how she
was loaded. She looked like a floating wreck, he claimed, but the owners
refused to pay him the money he had earned unless he went, and so he too was
lost with the crew. “Just one more
specimen of the good, true, and brave men we sacrifice by our most cruel and
manslaughtering neglect,” Plimsoll commented.

It is indeed too easy, at this remove, to be entranced by
the “romance” of the seaborne trade of the 19th Century, with its sleek hulls and
billowing clouds. We are indebted to Plimsoll not only for his load-line, and the
countless lives it was to save, but to his insights into the lives of some of the
most overlooked and forgotten of his era.

He was a true hero.

Britannia’s Wolf is available as an audio book

– listen to a sample

The first book in the Dawlish Chronicles series is now available as an audio book read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

To listen to as sample go to the links below and click on the small arrow beneath the cover image there:

Tuesday, 21 June 2016

Mutiny at sea is an inherently dramatic subject and few were
as dramatic – because of the small size of the crew involved, and the small
craft on which it played out – than that on the brigantine Natal in 1889. I learned of it in a book entitled “Revolt at Sea” by Irvin Anthony,
published in the United States by Putnam in 1937. The book contains accounts of
some twenty-four other mutinies, the last three being those on the Russian
pre-dreadnought Potemkin in 1905, in the German Fleet in 1918 and on the Dutch Zeven Provinciënin 1933. The Natal
incident is therefore presented as factual but there are areas left unexplained
which I will return to at the end of this article.

It appears that in 1889 – days and months unspecified – the “trim
but small” brigantine was en route
for Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. The registration of the Natal was not specified, but as her captain
was called Peter F. Enstrom it is possible that she was Scandinavian. The cargo
was described as “of no particular worth” and the size of her crew, though apparently
small, was not mentioned. There were apparently “no grim feuds among her people”,
a fact that makes the subsequent savagery hard to understood. It should however
be borne in mind that working conditions on merchant shipping in this period could
be atrocious. (There is a link at the end of this article to an earlier blog on
this subject). Even on the best-run ships, accommodation and messing could be unacceptable
by modern standards, and the rough discipline often imposed tended to foster deeply
felt animosities between owners, officers and crews.

This was the romantic view in the Age of Merchant Sail -the reality was often brutally differen

For whatever reason, four of the Natal’s crew decided on murdering the officers and taking over the ship.
A seaman called Johannsen armed himself with a capstan bar, while another,
Toton, possessed a revolver. The carpenter had his axe while the steward relied
on a long sheath knife. Their objective remains unclear – by 1889 telegraphic
communications and naval steamships had made it impossible for old-style piracy
to succeed and remain undetected for any length of time.

The attempt to capture the ship began on a midnight, when the
vessel was in charge of the second mate – who was the captain’s seventeen-year
old son – and while the captain himself, and the first mate, were asleep in
separate berths in the same cabin. The second
mate had just taken over the watch and was still feeling sleepy. He therefore lowered
a bucket over the side, drew up water, and sluiced it over his head to wake himself.
He was in the act of doing so when the carpenter crept up behind him and split
his skull with an axe. Death was instantaneous and no alarm was raised. (One
has the impression that there was nobody else was on deck, or was indeed needed,
as there was later mention of “light airs”). The body was unceremoniously dropped
overboard.

The reality of life at sea - "Eight Bells" by Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

The four mutineers now headed for Captain Enstrom’s cabin.
They entered stealthily without wakening either him or the mate. The carpenter
was chosen – or had volunteered – to kill the captain, like his son, with the axe,
while Toton was to shoot the mate with his revolver. The carpenter moved first,
sweeping down his axe on the captain’s head, but shearing past with a glancing
blow that drew blood but was not serious. Enstrom was instantly awake and on
his feet, punching his assailant. Johannsen tried to intervene, but in the close
confines of the cabin he could achieve only enough with his capstan bar to
knock of the aim of Totton, whose four successive shots all missed the mate.

Familiarity with the cabin layout, particularly in the
darkness, now played in the captain’s and mate’s favour. Fighting for their
live,s they punched and kicked and their assailants’ nerve broke. They fled up the
companionway and back on deck, leaving Totnes’ revolver in the hands of the
mate, who had wrestled it from him. The two officers now locked themselves in the
cabin and began to rummage for the small arms the ship carried but never had
occasion to use. They located a rifle, three revolvers and ammunition. The
captain appears to have been aware by now that his son was dead and was
obviously bent on revenge. The remainder of the crew, intimidated perhaps by the
mutineers, seem to have remained neutral in what had happened and to have
gathered on deck.

Remaining in the cabin was no long-term alternative, especially
with the firearms on board being in the hands of the captain and mate. They
rushed on deck with loaded weapons and those there – neutral as well as mutineers,
one gathers – rushed in panic before them down the forehatch. Captain Enstrom and
the mate locked it, trapping the crew below.

The “light airs” referred to allowed the vessel to drift
safely without manning and the two officers on deck kept turns on watch, with weapons
trained on the scuttle opening from the forehatch. A full day passed and no
food or water reached the prisoners. Two more passed, during which the
conditions beneath the hatchway must have become intolerable.

On the fourth day a flag of truce was waved from the scuttle
but was met with gunfire. With his son dead, Enstrom was not in a forgiving
mood. Only on a second attempt at parley did the mutineers suggest surrender,
only to be told that it would be unconditional. The prisoners accepted and trooped
on deck. Enstrom separated the four mutineers from the others and calmly shot
the carpenter and Toton. The steward and Johanssen, trembling, were sent below
as prisoners and the Natal resumed
her course for Brisbane.

The Age of Merchant Sail captured by British master John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893)

"Nightfall on the Thames" - 1880

The story, as told above, is a summary of that in Irvin
Anthony’s “Revolt at Sea”. My
immediate reaction was “Did it really happen?” for there is so much detail
missing – origin of the ship, location of the mutiny, size of the crew. Were
there earlier events that triggered such brutal resentment? How did the authorities
in Brisbane deal with these events, and was Captain Enstrom held accountable in
any way for his summary execution of two of the mutineers? What became of Johansen
and the steward afterwards? The whole story seems like incidents in some of
Joseph Conrad’s novels that hinge on blindly malignant brutality – one thinks
of his “Victory” and “Because of the Dollars”. I had never
heard of this Natal incident
previously and an internet search has turned up nothing. I did however discover
that the book’s author, Irvin Anthony, born in Philadelphia in 1890, had
produced a large number of other books with nautical themes. The inclusion of the
Natal story with those of other well-known
and factually-attested mutinies inclines one to think there must be some truth
in it.

But how much truth?

Is there any reader of mine out there who can shed some
light on this?Update 0930 on 22.06.16:In answer to the question above, more light was shed on the Natal affair in two splendid comments - with external links - by "Astrodene" and by Mike Rattenbury. Here they are shown here in their entireties:

It seems the Captain gave an interview to his local newspaper when he got back home, which was America. A much more graphic account of the cabin battle and their injuries. The mate was actually shot in his own cabin and subsequently joined the affray in the Captain's. Johanssen was captured when the others fled below and helped man the ship while the crew were confined. It seems the captain was not prosecuted, although they thought about it and the courts let the mutineers go. You can read the article at http://nyx.uky.edu/dips/xt72jm23cs9q/data/0185.pdf

It looks like it happened on November 27, 1883, but the news dosn't get out until the beginning of 1884. There are quite a few newspaper reports online, and entering 'Natal Mutiny 1884' brings them up. By March, the mutineers seem still to be in custody in Australia, awaiting extradition to Sweden for trial. http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP18840301.2.33 gives another detailed account. None of the reports seem to disagree with the captain's shooting of the mutineers.

Britannia’s Spartan

Six-inch breech loading guns
represented the cutting edge of naval technology in the early 1880s. In my
novel Britannia’s Spartan they are
seen in use on both British and Japanese ships. The splendid woodcut below
shows Japanese crews managing just such a weapon in the war of 1895 against
China. Click on the links below for further details – you can read the opening
via the “Look Inside” feature at the top left of the screen opened.

Friday, 17 June 2016

I was recently approached by a Dutch
reader of my blog who is interested, among much else of a nautical nature, in the
art of the great Age of Fighting Sail. He told me something of what he was
undertaking add I invited him to prepare a blog. It turned out to be a superb
one, as you’ll see from what follows, and it reflects some detective work on
his part. I found that Nykle lives in the Dutch province of Friesland, in the town
of Leeuwarden, near where I have family relations living – it’s a small world! I was even more intrigued by the fact that he’s
currently writing about inland navigation with which there was close family
involvement in the 19th Century. I’m handing over to Nykle to
introduce himself and thereafter I trust you’ll enjoy his article, and its
illustrations, as much as I have.

Introducing
Nykle Dijkstra:

I’m a student in maritime history at
Leiden University. I live in Leeuwarden (the Netherlands) and I’m 24 years old.
I’m very interested in “The Age of Sail”, mainly the period 1600-1900 and I’ve
written some articles about Dutch navy mariners in the Napoleonic times, about
ships of the Dutch East India Company that were wrecked on the coast of Sri
Lanka, about Dutch whaling history, and I’m currently writing about Friesian
inland navigation in the nineteenth century.

Last year, Antoine Vanner posted a
series of blogs about British naval artists of the 18th century (See links at the end of the article). Most
of them are fascinating life stories; in some cases the artists based their
works on their own experience during the most gruesome sea battles. Especially
the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century was a very intense period
in terms of naval conflict. Hence this period produced some of the greatest
British naval art, such as the paintings made by Nicholas Pocock. Some artists
however, didn’t reach this degree of fame and were eventually lost in history.

Last year I accidentally stumbled across an original ink sketch portraying a
small schooner in front of Peak Tenerife. It would be the start of a small
investigation which would eventually turn into this article. It’s a story about
a rather unknown naval artist who almost fought at Trafalgar but ended up
making beautiful drawings of naval life just outside the spotlights.

Thank you Antoine for giving me the
stage.

John
Evans – a forgotten naval artist

The sketch mentioned above was accompanied
by a few old written pages. I googled a fragment of the text and found out that
the drawing was used for a (slightly altered) engraving in the Naval Chronicle in 1818. This was the
same magazine in which Pocock placed many of his drawings. The Tenerife Peak
sketch was said to be made by a man called “J.E.” Two ships were added, perhaps
to make it more appealing to the audience.

Naval
Chronicle, Volume 40, 1818.

A piece of handwriting which was
included with the drawing of Teneriffe Peak. Perhaps it’s Evans, handwriting?

As I found out, “J.E.” made many more
drawings and he also was a frequent correspondent to the Chronicle. One of the drawings stated that “J.E.” was a navy
lieutenant. Interesting information, but still, his true identity was never
revealed. Therefore, I decided to gather all his drawings and letters and
combine them to get a better view of the author. In the end I found two
biographies about a naval officer named John Evans. His career and the ships on
which he served matched rather well with the drawings, and the story actually
mentioned that Evans was a skilled artist. Bingo! Although we don’t have 100%
certainty, it’s highly likely that J.E. was John Evans.

Toronto Public Library

According to the biography, John Evans
was born on 2 December 1786 or 1787. He was the son of John Evans, Esq., of
Dilwyn, co. Hereford, and of the Rock and Vermont, in Jamaica, by a daughter of
John Tyler, Esq., of Dilwyn House, who was grand-niece of Bishop John Tyler,
and a relative of Robert Southey, the Poet-Laureate (who would later
write what was for many years the standard biography of Nelson). Evans entered
the navy in 1803, but the two biographies differ from each other about the
first ship on which Evans served. One says it’s the Leviathan (74 guns) but the other one names HMS Leander (50 guns). Evans speaks about
the Leander in the Chronicle, but it’s also probable that
he only came aboard the Leander in
1805. In a letter accompanied to a drawing of St. George’s Island, J.E. wrote: “They [the Native Americans at Nova Scotia]
are extremely expert in the management of their little barks, and will impel
them through the water only with the aid of two small peddles, with
inconceivable velocity; a six-oared deal gig, with a stout crew, belonging to
the Leander, of 50 guns, could never
pull against one of them with anything like success.”

A view of Porto Bello [or Portobelo] on
the Spanish Main. The French ship we see here is of a Mediterranean type called
‘xebec’. Ronald Hakwins (Cornwall Maritime Museum) was so kind to take a closer
look on the drawings and pointed out that although the drawings are correct,
some of the engravings are a bit inaccurate. For instance the mizzen on
this xebec is drawn on a boom over the stern without a mast to support it.
Maybe the engraver took some artistic liberty. (Naval
Chronicle, Volume 32, 1814)

Evans allegedly joined the ships Trent (36 guns) and Desirée (36 guns). In the Desirée
he was present at the blockade of Cape François, the reduction of Port Dauphin,
where two forts and a 28-gun frigate, La
Sagesse, were taken from the enemy, and the surrender of the French
squadron with the remains of General Rochambeau’s army from Cape Francois on
board; and he was also frequently employed with the boats on cutting-out
affairs of ‘a very hazardous description’. The captain of HMS Desirée was Henry Whitby, who may have
been some kind of patron, as Evans followed him in 1805 to the Centaur. This ship then sailed for
Jamaica to join Nelson in his pursuit of De Villeneuve, but she encountered a
hurricane and only just made it safely to Halifax. Whitby was then given
command of HMS Leander, and it could
be possible that Evans joined him again.

Naval
Chronicle, Volume 39, 1818

Officers ofHMS Centaur. Unfortunately
Evans is not among them, but he came aboard in June 1805 and the hurricane happened
in July, so he probably was aboard at the time. Maybe the artist John Eckstein
gave Evans a few drawing lessons but that’s mere speculation.

I later found two more original drawings
by John Evans. This one shows a brig and a small cutter in a storm. No doubt
Evans experienced similar moments, and probably even much heavier gales. As far
as I know this sketch was not used for the Naval
Chronicle.

In 1807 John Evans shortly became a
prisoner of war when he sailed as a passenger on an armed brig, but he was soon
released. He then joined the sloops Drake
and Wolf. A short time later he
served on HMS Bacchante (20 guns)
under captain Samuel Hood Inglefield. He saw quite a lot of action with this
ship and even succeeded in the capture of the French brig Le Griffon (16 guns):

Naval
Chronicle, Volume 29, 1813

Sometime in 1808, Evans followed
Inglefield to HMS Daedalus (32 guns).
In this ship he served until September 1810 and contributed to the reduction of
the town of Samana, in St. Domingo. During his service aboard this ship he may
have encountered another hurricane, by which the ship was struck on the 3rd
of august, 1809. This happened in the vicinity of St. Domingo when the ship
sailed in a squadron with the navy ships Lark
and Moselle. The gale was first felt
by the Daedalus. The wind on the 2nd
of August was variable and the atmosphere was hazy. At
half past eight P.M., the gale commenced with very dark and gloomy weather, and
bright flashes of lightning, though without thunder. At nine it had increased
to a heavy gale, with a very high sea. The bowsprit, foremast, main, and mizzen
topmasts went over the side. Several fruitless attempts were made to save the
ship, when at last most fortunately she was kept before the wind and sea. The ship must inevitably have been lost if the wind had shifted
on the evening of the 2nd to the South or South West. The Lark, less fortunate than the Daedalus, foundered
with her captain (R. Nicholas), officers and crew. Only two hands were saved in
an extraordinary manner
after being picked up at night by the Moselle.

Naval
Chronicle, Volume 29, 1813

In 1810-11 Evans was employed on the North
American station. First in the Belvidera
(38 guns), bearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Herbert Sawyer, and then in the
sloops HMS Atalante and HMS Morgiana under Captains Frederick Hickey
and David Scott.

Naval
Chronicle, Volume 31, 1814.

Evans was promoted to the rank of
Lieutenant in the latter vessel on 16 November 1811; but in February 1812 he
retired from future service due to a severe liver complaint, from the effects
of which he would suffer for the rest of his life. Back in England, he may have
sent his drawings to the Naval Chronicle
as that’s when his first sketches were published. In spite of his disease he
would become a frequent correspondent to the Chronicle. In 1824 he even published a book about hydrography. About
his personal life the biography says he was married and had one son (also a
naval officer named John Evans) and one daughter.

A third sketch by John Evans, showing
Needham’s Point, Barbados. This drawing was used in the Naval Chronicle, and
just like the Tenerife Peak drawing it was slightly altered (see below). The ship (a topsail schooner) looks very
similar as the ship on the drawings of Tenerife Peak and Nichola Mole. Could it
be the same?

Naval
Chronicle, Volume 38, 1817

Neversink & Sandy Hook: Vol. 31,
1814

Port Royal: volume 36, 1816

Sources:

The Naval
Chronicle

The Nautical Magazine and Naval
Chronicle

A Naval Biographical Dictionary

Earlier blogs on Naval Artists of the Age of Sail – click on links below

Tuesday, 14 June 2016

From the mid-19th Century onwards the naval mine
developed in the general from we know today and which was to play a significant
role in the American Civil War, the Russ-Japanese War of 1904-05, both World
Wars and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88. The famous order by Admiral Farragut as
he drove his squadron into Mobile Bay in 1864 – “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” – referred to mines, then
often labelled as torpedoes, and not the automotive weapons that emerged in the
next decade. The concept of the floating mine had been around for centuries –
often in the form of boats that would be allowed to drift downriver towards
enemy bridges. The weakness was however that explosion would essentially be
random, whether close to the enemy or not, as detonation would depend on a
slow-burning fuze or a clockwork mechanism. The arrival of practical electrical
technology in the 1850s and 60s got around this problem, allowing controlled
detonation from shore of submerged mines, or detonation by systems integral to
the mine itself and triggered by contact.

USS Tecumseh sunk by mine in Mobile Bay, 1864

As the Confederate defences of Mobile Bay demonstrated,
mines proved a very effective, and relatively cheap, way of defending harbour
approaches – as was shown by the dramatic sinking of a unit of Farragut’s squadron,
the monitor USS Tecumseh. (One
episode of my novel Britannia’s Wolf
describes the protection of a major Russian Black Sea anchorage in 1877 by mines
anchored across the entrance and controlled through electrical cables connected
to observation posts onshore).

The destruction by mine of the Russian battleship Petropavlovsk off Port Arthur, 1904She took with her Russia's best naval commander, Admiral Makarov(Strange to see this tragedyused to decorate a box of chocolates!)

In view of my interest in such weapons systems I was
fascinated recently to find sketches of early mines in a publication called “The British Navy Book” by Cyril Field, apparently
published in 1915/16. It indicated that the first large-scale use of practical
mines occurred in the Crimean War (1854-56) when the Russians deployed them in
both the Baltic and the Black Sea to limit the movements of British and French
warships. The approaches to the great Russian naval base at Kronstadt, outside
St. Petersburg, were protected in this way and some fifty mines were “trawled
up” in ten days and destroyed by British forces. The improvised technique used
was hazardous in the extreme – two pulling- boats suspended a long rope between
them and it was sunk by heavy weights to
a depth of ten or twelve feet, and held suspended at that depth by empty casks
as floats. The boats then separated as far as the rope would allow, and rowed
onwards. There appears to have been
several types of mine, some of copper, others of wooden staves like those of a
barrel, and the bursting charge was 700 pounds of gunpowder. Detonation seems
to have been either by a “galvanic current” sent through a cable from a shore
station or by contact, the exact mechanism being unspecified. The drawings
here give details of Russian mines encountered by the British.

Britain was soon afterwards in conflict in war with China in
“The Arrow War” of 1856/60. The 890-ton screw corvette HMS Encounter came under attack by floating mines launched by the Chinese
when operating in the Pearl River (now called the Guangdong) downstream of
Canton (known as Guangzhou today). The source quoted earlier provides extracts
from a letter written by an officer on board Encounter.

HMS Encounter, shown here in China in 1862

The first attempt,
on 24th December 1856, involved an explosive-laden sampan towed
close by another craft, and then let loose to drift down towards Encounter’s bows. It was captured by a
ship’s boat acting as guard and fuses burning inside bamboo tubes were
extinguished in time to prevent explosion.

The second attempt, in the early hours of on 5th
January was potentially more lethal. The
officer’s letter states that the attack was by “two rafts, moored
together, with about 20 fathom of line buoyed up, with hooks to catch cables or
anything else, and, on the wires touching the ship's side, to break by the little
lead weight the lighted fuse on the top of the bamboo, which communicated with
the powder. These were lighted and all ready, but fortunately observed by our
guard-boat and towed clear of ship. Being only a raft it was just awash, and in
each caisson at least 17 cwt. (i.e. 1904 pounds or 865 kilograms ) of gunpowder
in open tubs and jars. The raft itself was made of 6-inch plank well bound
together, and caulked.”

Encounter
was attacked again two days later, again in the early morning hours of
darkness. It seems to have been guided into position by swimmers – an act of
considerable heroism. According to the unnamed British officer “A pair of vessels in the shape of a
can-buoy with a flag on the top, about 8 inches long; the fuse, with a tin box
containing punk (i.e. tinder) over the fuse, then a cover with lighted match on
top; this had a string to it, which, when pulled, drew out the centre partition
and communicated the fire to the punk, to allow the fellows who swam off with
them towards the ship to make their escape; but they got frightened at some
stir with the boats, and by accident one went off with a fearful explosion on
the starboard bow, about 60 yards, and the other, being deserted, floated down
on our booms. One of the men was caught and brought on board here, and had his
brains blown out at the port gangway. The buoy-shaped vessel was capable of
holding about 10 cwt. (i.e. half a ton) of gunpowder."

One final
attempt on the Encounter was again by
two floating mines coupled together by a length of rope, each containing half a
ton of powder. They were towed close by a small boat but it was detected by the
ship’s look-outs and destroyed by gunfire. Had these attacks been successful it
is hard to imagine the Encounter
surviving and one is struck by the courage of the Chinese who manoeuvred these
contraptions into position. Crude though they might have been, the era of
mine-warfare had commenced.

Britannia's Wolf

If you have found this article interesting you may like to read of mines used in anger in 1877. The first book in the Dawlish Chronicles Series features ironclad action in the Black Sea as the vicious Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 reaches its climax.

Russian forces are driving deep into the corrupt Ottoman-Turkish Empire. In the depths of a savage winter, as the Turks face defeat on all fronts, a British officer is enmeshed and finds himself confronting enemy ironclads, Cossack lances and merciless Kurdish irregulars. And in the midst of this chaos, while he himself is a pawn in the rivalry of the Sultan’s half-brothers for control of the collapsing empire, he is unwillingly and unexpectedly drawn to a woman whom he believes he should not love.

Britannia's Wolf It is also available as an audio book read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

Tuesday, 7 June 2016

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars saw very large numbers
of battles at sea between small numbers of ships, but few in which entire
squadrons engaged and yet fewer fleet actions on the scale of the Nile,
Camperdown or Trafalgar. On one occasion however a medium-sized Royal Navy
squadron escaped from a confrontation which, due to the disparity of forces,
could have ended in annihilation. That it did not reflected the cool head and
tactical mastery of the British commander, Admiral Lord William Cornwallis
(1744 – 1819).

Cornwallis had come to prominence in 1782, in the four-day
Battle of the Saintes, as captain of the “74” ship-of-the-line Canada. He had already engaged, and
defeated, a similarly sized French ship, the Hector, when he saw the opportunity to close with the enemy flagship,
the massive 104-gun Ville de Paris.
Despite the disparity in size, Cornwallis continued his attack for two hours
and though the larger vessel’s position proved to be hopeless, the French
Admiral de Grasse (1723 –1788) saw it
as a point of honour not to strike his flag to anybody but an enemy admiral. He
only surrendered when Admiral Sir Samuel Hood (1724-1816) came up in the Barfleur, by which stage only de Grasse
himself and two other men were alive and unwounded on the upper deck. He stated
after the battle that Cornwallis’s Canada
had done him more harm than all the rest of the Royal Navy force together.

Battle of the Saintes, 1782 - major fleet action with ships-of-the-line

This is where Cornwallis came to prominence

On 7th June 1795 Cornwallis, in his flagship Royal Sovereign, was cruising on
blockade duty off Belle Isle, on the southern coast of Brittany, with five “sail-of-the-line”
and two frigates. A French convoy of merchantmen under escort of three ships-of-the-line
and six frigates. In the subsequent action, in which the French escorts beat an
ignominious retreat, eight merchantmen were captured. Cornwallis remained on
station thereafter and just over a week later, on 16th June, one of
his frigates signalled sighting of the French fleet – a huge force consisting
of thirteen sail-of-the-line, several frigates, two brigs and a cutter. Retreat
was now the better part of valour and Cornwallis decided – correctly – to
decline combat. The wind at first falling and afterwards coming round to the
north, the enemy's ships were enabled to get to windward, and the next morning
by daylight – in calm conditions, they were seen mooring on both quarters of
the British squadron. Cornwallis’s force was now potentially the meat in the
sandwich.

During the preceding day and through the night Cornwallis had
led the retreating ships in the Royal
Sovereign, so as to be able to take advantage of any favourable opportunity
that might present itself in the night for altering course and escaping unseen
by the enemy. With daylight however he changed his disposition, ordering his
two slowest-sailing ships, the Brunswick
and the Bellerophon, to lead, and the
more nimble Mars and Triumph to form the rear. He himself, in
Royal Sovereign, formed a connecting
link, ready to come to the assistance of any of his squadron that might need
support. It was now in the power of the French admiral to engage closely, and
at about nine in the morning a line-of-battle ship and a frigate opened fire on
the Mars. From this time an almost constant
cannonade was kept up, the French ships firing at a distance as they came up –
and making no attempt to close and board – and Mars, Triumph and Royal Sovereign returning fire, thereby
protecting the slow-sailing Brunswick
and Bellerophon. These latter two
vessels were now making every effort to increase speed, lightening themselves
by cutting away their anchors and boats, throwing some of their ballast overboard
and crowding on all sail. This inconclusive chase continued through the day and
into the afternoon. Only then did the close upon the rear ship, the Mars. Four of the French ships of the
line bore down on her. Had they concentrated their fire and laid themselves
alongside, the outcome would have been fatal for her. At this critical juncture
a ruse already underway was to change the situation completely.

Beaufort, an admiral in later life

In the early morning Cornwallis had called by signal for a
boat from the frigate HMS Phaeton.
The young officer who came across to get instructions to bring back to his
captain would later be Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort (1774 –1857), creator of
the Beaufort Scale for indicating wind force. He was met on Royal Sovereign's deck by Cornwallis,
who told him: "Stop, sir; listen: go
back immediately and tell your captain to go ahead of the squadron a long way,
and, when far enough off, to make the signals for seeing first one or two
strange sail, then more, and then a fleet; in short, to humbug those fellows
astern. He will understand me. Go."

The Phaeton sailed
well, but was not until three o'clock in the afternoon that she was
sufficiently far ahead to signal back with credibility that initially one, then
two, five, new sail had been sighted. She followed this up by signalling an
even larger British force was approaching. It was known that the French had
copies of the Royal Navy’s tabular signals, and Phaeton hoisted a signal to draw on the fictitious squadron. She
then turned to sail back towards Cornwallis’s force, as if guiding the
newcomers on. By sheer chance three small vessels were actually just visible
over the horizon. Wholly taken in by the ruse, and apparently faced with the
possibility of action with a larger force, the French broke off the action and
retreated. Cornwallis’s entire force escaped without loss of a single ship.

How the battle might have developed had the French exploited their numerical advantage -

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg's painting of the "Glorious First of June" battle 1794

One cannot but wonder if poor French morale in the aftermath
of the brutal culling of the French naval officer-corps during the Revolution
did not play a significant role. Defeat and failure could well be rewarded with
the guillotine, and officers who still remained in service were likely to be
highly risk-averse – as shown by the unwillingness to close, even when the
British force was outnumbered. Cornwallis, by contrast, had command of a
superbly confident and professional force. In his later report he gave special
credit to the seamen and marines of the Mars
and Triumph, which hadthe brunt of the French fire. He stated
that, "instead of being cast down at
seeing thirty sail of the enemy's ships attacking our little squadron, they
were in the highest spirits imaginable, and although circumstanced as we were,
we had no great reason to complain of the conduct of the enemy, yet our men
could not help repeatedly expressing their contempt of them. Could common
prudence have allowed me to let loose their valour I hardly know what might not
have been accomplished by such men."

Cornwallis himself had given an example of calm resolution,
shaving, dressing and powdering his hair during the morning chase according to
his normal routine. He apparently to his flag captain that he had been in
similar situations before, and knew very well what they, the French, would do.

What followed was to prove him correct in his evaluation of
the enemy.

Britannia’s Wolf is available as an
audio book

– listen to a sample

The first book in the Dawlish Chronicles series is now available as an
audio book read by the distinguished American actor David Doersch. If you
haven't previously ordered an audio-book from audible.com you can download it
without cost as part of a 30-Day Free Trial. You can listen on your Smart
Phone, Tablet or MP3 Player.

To listen to as sample go to the links below and click on the small
arrow beneath the cover image there:

Friday, 3 June 2016

The history of the Netherlands in the 19th
Century is a closed book for most non-Dutch, not least because of the incorrect
perception that “little happened” and as the country was at peace in Europe from
1831 to 1940. The Netherlands were however involved in a series of colonial
campaigns in the vast territory of the Dutch East Indies, which constituted
most of what is the present-day nation of Indonesia.

Dutch power in the East Indies - end of "The Java War" in 1830Painting by Nicolaas Pieneman shows submission of a local prince

There had been a Dutch presence on the island of Java since
the early seventeenth century and the island had become the focus of intense British
and French rivalry during the Napoleonic Wars. Dutch power was spread more
thinly elsewhere and the nineteenth century saw a succession of campaigns to
bring the entire archipelago under control. The instrument for this was the
KNIL – the Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch
Leger, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. Established in 1830, this
force was not part of the Dutch Army (which only served at home) and was not
entitles to make use of Dutch conscripts. Funded by the colonial budget, it
fell under the command of the Governor-General of the East Indies. It accepted volunteers of other European
nationalities in addition to many from the Netherlands itself – one unlikely
example being the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854 –1891) who joined in 1876,
served for four months and then deserted. The officers and non-commissioned
officers were mainly European (typically Dutch, German, Belgian and Swiss) but
the majority of the troops were indigenous Indonesians, mainly from Java. In
the KNIL’s earlier years several thousand African soldiers were recruited from
the small Dutch holdings on the Gold Coast (Modern Ghana).

Location of Aceh - with thanks to Google Earth

The greatest – and most sustained – challenge faced by the
KNIL was the series of difficult campaigns from 1873 to 1914 which became known
as the Aceh War. Though not a single continuous conflict, it never achieved
outright resolution – traces of resistance persisted until the Japanese
invasion in 1942 – and it represented a steady drain on Dutch resources. Aceh
represented the northern tip of Sumatra and as a sultanate had its independence
guaranteed by an Anglo-Dutch Treaty in 1824. In the following decades it became
a rich regional power, its wealth based on production of half the world’s pepper.
Smaller local rulers were brought under control by the reigning sultan and Aceh
power extended steadily southwards, coming into collision with the Dutch, who
by this stage were extending their influence northwards. Piracy represented a
profitable sideline for some of the coastal communities, leading to punitive
expeditions by the US Navy in 1832 and 1838. (These expeditions were described in the Blog of 26th
January 2016 – see link at end of article). The situation was complicated
by the fact that there were still British claims to Sumatra, though these were
not pressed.

A KNIL General inspecting local troops in 1870s

The situation changed in 1871 when a treaty was signed
between Britain and the Netherlands which gave the Dutch a free hand in
Sumatra, as well as the obligation to supress piracy, in return for the Dutch giving
up its holdings on the Gold Coast. While the Ache Sultanate remained
independent it represented a major obstacle to Dutch control of the enormous 182,800
square mile island – the sixth largest in the world. Concern was raised in the
Dutch colonial government in 1873 when the Sultanate initiated negotiation with
the American government about a bi-lateral treaty – potentially introducing another
major player – and the decision was taken to annex Aceh militarily. The campaign
for doing so was to prove hastily and inadequately planned and resourced. The over-optimistic
objective was to bombard the Sultan’s capital at Bandar Aceh, at the island’s
northern tip and to seize the town as a base for further efforts to occupy the coastal
areas. It was anticipated that seizure of the sultan and his palace would
trigger a collapse in resistance.

The death of General Johan Köhler 14th April 1873

The sultanate’s ability to resist was badly underestimated
as significant numbers of modern weapons had been imported to Aceh. In April
1873 the Dutch force’s attempt to storm the palace was bloodily repulsed and the
commander, General Johan Köhler (1818 - 1873) was killed, together with some
80of his troops. Recognising that the situation was impossible, Köhler’s deputy,
now in command, ordered retreat and the expeditionary force returned to Java. A
Dutch naval blockade was now imposed and efforts by the sultanate to get
support from the United States and from the Ottoman Empire proved fruitless.
Aceh was on its own.

KNIL officers at Banda Aceh, January 1874

The defeat
had been humiliating for Dutch prestige and a second, and larger, expedition
was mounted later the same year. Commanded by General Jan van Swieten (1807 –1888)
this was a much better resourced effort. It was the largest offensive that the Dutch
had yet mounted in the East Indies – 8,500 troops, 4,500 porters and labourers,
with a further 1,500 troops being deployed after the initial landings. The
timing proved disastrous as it coincided with a cholera outbreak that respected
neither side. Recognising that direct confrontation was futile, the Sultan abandoned
Bandar Aceh to the Dutch forces in early 1874 – relinquishing the symbolically
important palace – and took to the hills and forests to the south to conduct a guerrilla
campaign. In the six months from November 1873 to April 1874 the Dutch force
lost 1,400 men – and this was only the beginning.

A vicious
six-year guerrilla conflict followed, with both sides suffering heavy casualties,
and with tropical diseases continuing to represent as significant a hazard as enemy
action. In 1880 the Dutch realised – that for now at least – outright conquest would
prove impossible. The war was proclaimed to be at and end and Dutch forces
settled down to defending the areas they controlled, primarily that around
Banda Aceh. While using their naval forces to patrol the coastline they initiated
an effort to draw up treaties with local leaders.

A two-year
period of civilian rule followed – during which increasing violence showed that
resistance to Dutch rule was not at an end. In late 1883 military rule was again
imposed and, in a steadily worsening situation, it was recognised that the war
had reignited and a new, and even deadlier, phase was beginning. But that’s another
story!

"Britannia’s reach is not just political or military alone. What
higher interest can there be than consolidation of Britain’s commercial
interests?” So says one of the key figures in this novel, which centres on the
efforts of a British-owned company to reassert control of its
cattle-raising investment in Paraguay, following a revolt by its workers.

This story of desperate riverine combat brings historic naval fiction
into the age of Fighting Steam.

About Me

My "Dawlish Chronicles" are set in the late 19th Century and reflect my deep interest in the politics, attitudes and technology of the period. The fifth novel in the series, “Britannia’s Amazon” is now available in both paperback and Kindle formats. It follows the four earlier Dawlish Chronicles, "Britannia's Wolf", "Britannia's Reach”, "Britannia's Shark" and "Britannia's Spartan". Click on the book covers below to learn more or to purchase.
I’ve had an adventurous career in the international energy industry and am proud of having worked in every continent except Antarctica. History is a driving passion in my life and I have travelled widely to visit sites of historical significance, many insights gained in this way being reflected in my writing. I welcome contact on Facebook and via this Blog. My website is www.dawlishchronicles.com and its “Conflict” section has a large number of articles on topics from the mid-18th Century to the early 20th Century.